Curses! Made it through 11 pages of responses without seeing this, and then, just as I'm about to post it, you come in. Yes, I do see a face, rather clearly - eyes, eyebrows, nose, mouth, hair, and all.

Have some shmuckers for beating me to it!

Render unto Ì¶CÌ¶eÌ¶aÌ¶sÌ¶aÌ¶rÌ¶Gathrun the things that are Ì¶CÌ¶eÌ¶aÌ¶sÌ¶aÌ¶rÌ¶Gathrun's :

Gathrun, back on page 5, wrote:

Does the face in the thought bubble diagram of the first drawing look like Maggie or the Maggie-bot to anyone else?

Nice of them to delay Maggie's judgement until she's not as useful to them anymore. Users.

That face is the first thing that struck me about the update and I was so excited to read what the forums would speculate about it, but I guess you three are the only people who kinda gave it some attention. Oh well.

It could be Maggie, but I'm not sure with the haircut (looks like a short bob, though it also looks like it could be longer on one side. There's the parting, too, which is on the wrong side for Maggie... but also for Bunny, which is another face I thought it could be. Hm.

Ah nooooo.... they better not mess with Jed. Something tells me he'll be an active "safe space" for our heroes from the Thinkers. Betting he's got some bitchin' anti-think defenses.

Oh no ... you don't suppose that there'll be a decision with 66 nodes, do you?

jojolagger wrote:

Is it just me or does Jed just keep getting more and more important?

The signamancy of Jed, and the Jed-Eye Knights, in particular, does indicate that there will be some sort of massive "civil war" that is over before it starts, and the old order will be gone.

So what kind of rebellion will show up, and what massive amounts of damage that really should not have happened will the "good guy" terrorists do?

... am I really saying that Parson will be a Luke figure? With a decrypted as the Obiwan?

Earendil wrote:

... Erf as a living creature, with thinkamancy and strings of its own. Maybe the GMs and the temple were created to control / censor / imprison that conscience. Maybe the Temple is actually the prison....

What, a snarl/gates/rift plotline? Are you saying that there isn't anything original in Erf, that it's all recycled?

...

Next:

spartanMP wrote:

As for the whole "Erfworld is kept in a state of perpetual war" and the Grand Abbie's dreams of "peace on Erf", I'll just remind people of what was said by a Great Mind from Stupid World - "Only the Dead have seen the end of War".

Actually, you do realize that the saying in Erf would be, "Only the uncroaked have seen the end of war".

What if the combination of the 4 tools gives uncroak-the-world? The dish sends out some sort of "Kill them all" signal, the shoes let you go anywhere, the plyers let you decroak, and the hammer lets you bash anything between you and the next hex?

... Hmm, if there's an actual ocean between you and the next hex, that's a problem, but if it's all one connected land mass...

That would achieve all of the following:
1. Break Erf.
2. Peace on Erf.
3. Everyone united under one banner
4. Hippies get their goal of peace.
5. Carneys enjoy the broken rules.
6. Great minds that think alike all like the same great mind of Wanda
7. ...

I find it funny how the GMs are treated as such bad villains who need to be blown up by many of the audience, when what they do is often very similar to what in real life is done by our governments and their allied governments with basic support from citizens...

That's just it though, where is the basic support from the citizens? Where is the elected authority? Where is the consent of the governed?

No, the actions of the GM are more akin to some shadowy organization (think CIA, KGB, SS, etc.) operating behind the scenes and pulling strings in the world to further their own goals, and to ensure the continuation of their own power, and to maintain secrecy of their actions. When we do see these things happen in the real world, they are considered to be the height of corruption of power and the subversion of legitimate rule and governance. That is why what they are doing is so disturbing.

Where is the support for the citizens, elected authority, and consent for the governed on any government on erfworld? Nowhere. Those aren't necessary to be a government IRL, and certainly isn't in erfworld.

Furthermore we are talking about what is basically the high priests of eyemancy, if they didn't act like a shadowy organization the people they represent would be compelled by duty to eyemancy to overthrow them and install a shadowy organization. Remember casters have a duty to their discipline as well as their ruler, and eyemancy is lookamancy, thinkamancy, and foolamancy it's basically made for shadowy secret cabals so of course they run themselves as one that's how the idea of not doing so is literally outside their worldview. The same way the idea of the hippies not being a hippy commune is outside their worldview.

So, you need to not only kill the inventor, avoid using the temptation to use it yourself, and suppress knowledge of the invention, but also depreciate the underlying know-how that can lead back to the (re)discovery.

Afterthought: I wonder if the Great Minds know of a way to make an idea "unthinkable"?

I find it funny how the GMs are treated as such bad villains who need to be blown up by many of the audience, when what they do is often very similar to what in real life is done by our governments and their allied governments with basic support from citizens...

That's just it though, where is the basic support from the citizens? Where is the elected authority? Where is the consent of the governed?

No, the actions of the GM are more akin to some shadowy organization (think CIA, KGB, SS, etc.) operating behind the scenes and pulling strings in the world to further their own goals, and to ensure the continuation of their own power, and to maintain secrecy of their actions. When we do see these things happen in the real world, they are considered to be the height of corruption of power and the subversion of legitimate rule and governance. That is why what they are doing is so disturbing.

Where is the support for the citizens, elected authority, and consent for the governed on any government on erfworld? Nowhere. Those aren't necessary to be a government IRL, and certainly isn't in erfworld.

Furthermore we are talking about what is basically the high priests of eyemancy, if they didn't act like a shadowy organization the people they represent would be compelled by duty to eyemancy to overthrow them and install a shadowy organization. Remember casters have a duty to their discipline as well as their ruler, and eyemancy is lookamancy, thinkamancy, and foolamancy it's basically made for shadowy secret cabals so of course they run themselves as one that's how the idea of not doing so is literally outside their worldview. The same way the idea of the hippies not being a hippy commune is outside their worldview.

I think you kind of missed the point. Multilis was comparing the actions of the GMs to that of real-world governments, and using that comparison as justification for what they have done. It was his/her(?) comments that brought up the idea of the support of the governed:

Quote:

what they do is often very similar to what in real life is done by our governments and their allied governments with basic support from citizens...

My point was that the GMs do not have equivalent support, therefore the comparison between their actions and those of real-world democracies is not a valid justification.

The lesson here is that when responding to a quoted post, it may be helpful to actually read the original post quoted within that post, so as to establish an understanding of context.

Also interesting is that they don't acknowledge Duty as a potential defense against being a Baddie (Maggie is guilty), but are still willing to cut Parson some slack and spare Maggie... for now.

Ah, but the highest priority for Thinkamancers is supposed to be Thinkamancy itself. Duty would probably be a great defense, if that Duty applied to the discipline, rather than a side.

I wonder if the GM's attempts to eliminate Luck nodes represent their trying to deny Fate the same way as Charlie (if possibly for very different reasons).

I wonder whether 'Fate' isn't just a means the Titans built into the world to help guide it to an appropriate outcome - whatever criteria they have for that - and the Erfworlders are working against that inherent goal?

The mention of the oldest decisions in Temple history, combined with the art in the final panel (that brain in the middle with the Illuminati-ish eye) makes me think that the Temple of the Great Minds might be a structure similar to Jed. We haven't heard it talk, but it might be the same sort of thing.

There have been several arguments about what that last image is. Some say it's clearly Bunny's badness spell, others say it clearly can't be Bunny's badness spell. But yes, "it could be the temple itself" came up, too.

The mention of the oldest decisions in Temple history, combined with the art in the final panel (that brain in the middle with the Illuminati-ish eye) makes me think that the Temple of the Great Minds might be a structure similar to Jed. We haven't heard it talk, but it might be the same sort of thing.

Whatever decision-space was unsealed, it was not merely Jed's existence that unsealed it. Isaac already knew about Jed. Even if his reaction is not genuine in that scene, if merely learning of an Awakened Tower (for lack of a better word) changed something, the decision would have been unsealed back then.

If true, then it follows that something else in this page unsealed the space. "The bubble on the involvment of the tower as a possible actor in this matter" was apparently the new thing. To me, "unsealing a decision space" means reevaluating a decision previously made based on new information. I would suppose that learning of Jed's autonomy either suggests something that was thought impossible is not so, or means that some action the Minds had thought they would never take may now be back in consideration.

If I were to guess...I'd say the former. I suspect that what Maggie, Ace, and Sizemore did is fundamentally different than what dollamancers have done to date, even the ones who seemingly gave life to their creations. I suspect that this trio actually gave permanent life to something that didn't have it before.

...which just makes me even more curious about Stanley's walnut-pigeons.

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